The Battle for the Ballard Waterfront
A long-standing feud between the city of Ballard and a railroad company culminates in a dramatic late-night confrontation over street construction on the tide flats.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Judge Osborn granted a temporary restraining order yesterday against the city of Ballard, J.E. Nichol, and others, to stop work on streets the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad claims as its own. The city council recently passed an ordinance creating streets over property on the waterfront long occupied by the railroad, which has made numerous valuable improvements there. Under orders from the council, J.E. Nichol began driving piles at 5 o'clock in the morning, breaking the company's log boom. The railroad claims it has the first right to the land, having occupied the locality for years. The suit is the latest chapter in a long-standing dispute regarding the company's right to operate on Shilshole Avenue. The road was built before the town was platted, with the townsite owners furnishing ties and the railroad laying the rails. The conflict escalated when the city requested a new depot from the Great Northern, which complained the Lake Shore track was in the way. The city has now sought to force an issue by extending streets over the tide flats, potentially impairing the railroad's usefulness. The court must now determine if the railroad's long occupancy gives it a stronger right than the city's power to control its streets.
“The city of Ballard desires to get the log boom and dump out of the way and deems that it has the right to create and lay out streets on its water front by ordinance.”
This 1892 struggle over the control of the waterfront and the use of 'tide flats' echoes the modern, often fraught, development of Seattle’s shorelines and public versus private access. The tension between municipal expansion and historic infrastructure rights remains a defining feature of the city's growth.
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